Caroline Marks vs. The Elements

A decade and a half of dominance and natural forces stood between Caroline Marks and her first World Surfing League (WSL) title. She conquered both.

The 21-year-old Florida native won her first world title on Sept. 9 at the Rip Curl WSL Finals in San Clemente, California. She became only the fourth woman to win a world title since 2007, following 15 years of dominance from eight-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore, five-time world champion Carissa Moore and two-time world champion Tyler Wright.

By claiming the top title at Lower Trestles in San Clemente, Marks added her name to the list of surfing’s all-time greats and she had a perfect storm around her to do it.

The 2023 WSL Finals were intruded on by Hurricane Jova — the first hurricane to reach Category 5 strength in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean since 2018 — which unleashed a surf swell at the event. The finals’ location in San Clemente added a wrinkle to nature’s impact on the competition, as hurricanes on the coast of California are both uncommon and difficult to predict.

The 2023 WSL Finals featured a high-pressure competition in which the top five surfers competed against each other in a bracket, with the higher ranked athletes receiving byes to later rounds.

Marks, who entered the day as the No. 3 seed, had to defeat No. 5 Caitlin Simmers and No. 2 Tyler Wright before she finally went head-to-head against top ranked Moore in the best-of-three title match. In the extreme conditions, Marks swept Moore, two matches to zero.

Then after being hoisted up while crushing a Red Bull to celebrate, Marks got on a plane to head home to Florida. But when she landed, she was met with the destruction that Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida while she was away competing, had brought to the state.
“That was really sad to see,” Marks told The Messenger. “I went back to Florida and I just saw a lot of houses destroyed.”

It was the same kind of natural phenomenon that she had just overcome to win a championship on the other side of the country. And it was only the most recent hurricane to wreak havoc on her home state. The sight was a reminder of everything that the increasingly-common natural disaster brings, both in terms of her sport and the human impact.

“Some hurricanes are great, they bring great waves, but then some of them damage people’s homes, which is really sad to see,” Marks said.

In Marks’ lifetime, 71 hurricanes and tropical storms — including nine major hurricanes (category 3 or higher) — have impacted Florida. Major hurricanes have become more frequent in the last four decades, especially in regions that historically have seen less, including the Pacific coast of North America. NASA projects that this number will increase in the coming years due to climate change.

Marks, who grew up with regular hurricanes in Florida, has dealt with the sadness of the destruction that some storms bring. But through it all, she has also honed her competitive instincts in the face of extreme weather.

“There’s just a lot of what’s out of your control,” Marks said. “You can go out there and you can be surfing the best and you could have all these things align for you, but bottom line you have to go out there and get the waves and read the ocean. That’s what’s so unique about our sport, you not only need to be a talented surfer, but you need to have great water skills.”

At an early age, Marks made it a habit to surf in hurricane swells, both for practice purposes and overall fun. She says one of her favorite things to do is surf through a hurricane in Florida.

With those experiences in hand, Marks went into her pro surfing career with the mindset to adapt to conditions without relying on prior expectations. That philosophy has served her well in an unpredictable sport that is impacted by climate change and variable forecasts.

She was the youngest surfer to qualify for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where surfing made its Olympic debut. There, at Tsurigasaki Beach in Japan, Marks began her Olympic career having to navigate waves affected by Typhoon Nepartak, which made its way through the pacific to the Japanese coast.

“We saw the waves changing, like, so much,” Marks said. “I surfed like three heats that day and from the first heat to the last heat the waves just got bigger and more wild.”

Marks didn’t win a medal at the Tokyo Games, but after claiming her first world title and qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics, she will be going into next year with a new level of confidence, especially after winning at the Olympic venue.

Tahiti, which is part of French Polynesia, will host the Olympic surfing competition next summer. Nearly 10,000 miles away from Paris, it will break the Olympic record for the farthest medal competition from a host city.

In August, Marks won the Tahiti Pro at the WSL’s Championship Tour stop at the Teahupo’o break, which is widely recognized as one the heaviest waves in the world with some of the most difficult surf conditions.

The conditions at Teahupo’o can be seen in the name of the place, which loosely translates to the “place of skulls.” But on the day Marks won, she found herself instead looking at the sky, where she saw an unexpected storm cloud approaching.

“It wasn’t even predicted, it just happened,” Marks said. “Pretty much there was just this cloud over my heat and it made the waves really windy and choppy and really hard. And that’s just something you have to adapt to.”

Marks knows she can’t control the weather becoming more unpredictable or hurricanes becoming more frequent. But heading into the Olympic year, Marks — with a WSL title under her belt and the experience of earning it in a hurricane swell — will lean on her Florida upbringing as a competitive advantage.